DISPATCHES

UNIFYING THEORY OF BUSH POLITICS

The chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in
Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a
videoconference in January with top GSA political appointees to
discuss ways the GSA's nearly $60 bln per year in government
contracts could be turned to help Republican candidates, according to
House investigators. With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up
to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White
House's deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint
presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections.
When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political
appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could "help 'our
candidates' in the next elections," according to a 3/6 letter to Doan
from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one
method suggested was using "targeted public events, such as the
opening of federal facilities around the country." On 3/28 Doan was
scheduled to appear before Waxman's committee, which is investigating
whether remarks made during the videoconference violated the Hatch
Act, a federal law that restricts executive-branch employees from
using their positions for political purposes. Those found in
violation of the act can be removed from their jobs. Waxman's
investigation began in response to a 1/19 story in the Washington
Post about a no-bid job Doan tried to give to firms run by Edie
Fraser, a veteran Washington public relations executive who had
served as a paid consultant to Doan. Waxman's investigators concluded
that the two women had "a long-standing business relationship" that
was not "previously disclosed," according to Waxman.

Paul Kiel of TPMMuckraker.com on 3/26 that the GSA actions may be
connected with the purging of US attorneys in December who were
insufficiently loyal to the Bush administration. A reader noted that
after the November elections, "it was clear that the GOP was in a
tailspin. The only remaining levers of power in Republican hands were
held by the administration, and it had just two years left to reverse
the tide. Evidently, Karl Rove decided that he had been
insufficiently aggressive in using federal agencies to bolster the
chances of Republican candidates. So he dispatched Jennings to
convince the minions at GSA to ensure that every new federal project
would have a Republican cutting the ribbon." While two US attorneys
were asked to step down before the elections -- one in Arkansas to
make room for a specific Rove disciple and Chiara, whose office was a
mess -- the plan to dismiss the rest kicked into high gear
immediately after the elections. "What we're going to find, if
Congress successfully subpoenas officials or their emails, is that
after the Republicans got routed in November of 2006 a panicked Karl
Rove turned up the flame under lots of schemes that had simmered on
the back burners for months or years. New orders went out -- learn
the lessons of the exit polling, and make sure that 2008 brings
success. The White House, in its panic, abandoned caution, and got
sloppy. It left its fingerprints all over the sorts of things it had
generally manipulated at arms-length. And the man who headed up the
effort, by all indications, was Karl Rove's right hand, J. Scott
Jennings."

PROSECUTOR PURGE BUSINESS AS USUAL? Are Democrats making
too much of the dismissal of eight US attorneys, apparently for
political reasons? Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com noted that Chris
Matthews' show on MSNBC (3/25) included a roundtable of pundits from
Time, US News & World Report, the New York Times and NBC News
mocking the Democrats for trying to force Karl Rove to testify about
the firings. The Washington Post also defended the Bush
administration in a (3/26) editorial that stated that Gonzales
appears "to have tried to cover up something that, as far as we yet
know, didn't need covering. US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the
president . ..."

Greenwald noted that "there are only two instances in the last six
years where real investigations occurred in any of the Bush scandals
-- this US attorneys scandal (because Democrats now have subpoena
power) and the Plame case (due to the fluke of two Republican DoJ
officials with integrity, James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald). And in
both cases, it was revealed conclusively that top Bush officials --
at the highest levels of the government -- repeatedly and
deliberately lied about what they did." But the Beltway media aren't
bothered.

The Justice Department's Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales' senior
counsel and White House liaison, will invoke her Fifth Amendment
right to refuse to answer questions put to her by the US Senate that
might incriminate her. "The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms.
Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under
these circumstances is very real," Goodling's lawyer, John Dowd, told
the Associated Press (3/26). "One need look no further than the
recent circumstances and proceedings involving Lewis Libby," he
added. But Tim Grieve of Salon.com noted, Libby found himself in
trouble not for telling the truth but for lying -- repeatedly and
under oath -- about what he knew and what he said about Valerie
Plame. "If the White House is right that no crimes were committed in
the prosecutor purge -- and if Goodling would really tell the truth
while testifying -- then what possible reason could she have for
refusing to do so?" Grieve wondered.

WHY THE PURGE MATTERS: In a week in which the autopsy
results for Anna Nicole Smith and worries over poisonous pet food are
bound to capture more attention that the continuing fallout over the
firing of eight US attorneys, Tim Grieve of Salon.com noted, it will
be as hard as ever to persuade the public that the purge matters.
Josh Marshall, whose TalkingPointsMemo.com has led the way in
reporting on the US attorneys purge, makes an admirable effort
(3/25):

"For all the intensity and hostility awash in our politics, there
are some lines we just assume aren't going to be crossed, lines that
are so basic that the civil compact itself can't easily survive if
they're not respected. One of those is the vote. Whoever's in power
and however intense things get, most of us assume that the party in
power won't interfere with the vote count. We also assume that the
administration won't use the IRS to harass or imprison political
opponents. And we assume that criminal prosecutions will be
undertaken or not undertaken on the facts.

"... no system is perfect and partisan affiliation may distort the
justice system at the margins. But none of what we're seeing here is
at the margins. What we seem to see are repeated cases in which US
Attorneys were fired for not pursuing bogus prosecutions of persons
of the opposite party. Or vice versa...

"We all understand that politics and the law aren't two
hermetically sealed domains. And we understand that partisanship may
come into play at the margins. But we expect it to be the exception
to the rule and a rare one. But here it appears to have become the
rule rather than the exception, a systematic effort at the highest
levels to hijack the Justice Department and use it to advance the
interest of one party over the other by use of selective
prosecution."

As for the president's renewed endorsement of Alberto Gonzales
after new documents showed that he lied about his role in the
firings, Marshall writes: "This isn't a case where Alberto Gonzales
has fallen short of the president's standards or bungled some
process. This is the standard. The attorney general has done and is
doing precisely what is expected of him."

RNC HELPS WHITE HOUSE AIDES DUCK SCRUTINY: Congressional
investigators have discovered that White House aides regularly
communicate using email accounts provided by the Republican Party,
apparently in an effort to avoid public disclosure. Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington complained that such activity
violates the Presidential Records Act, which requires that the White
House preserve such records. House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee Chairman Henry Waxman on 3/26 issued letters to the
Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign
directing them to preserve all emails by and for White House
officials and meet with the committee regarding the legal issues
involved in conducting official government business using partisan
email accounts. The National Journal reported that Rove does about
95% of his emailing using his RNC account. Josh Marshall of
TalkingPointsMemo.com noted that "whatever claim the White House may
have to protect everyone at the White House from congressional
scrutiny by invoking executive privilege, this use of outside private
email accounts may turn out to be too clever by half," since emails
from the RNC "by any definition" aren't emails written or received by
anyone in their capacity as a presidential advisor. And Laura Rosen
of warandpiece.com wonders (3/26) about the national security
implications of White House officials using RNC accounts.

DISREGARDING COMMANDERS: George W. Bush blasted House
Democrats 3/23 by saying that the Iraq war withdrawal plan they
passed as part of the supplemental budget amounted to "an act of
political theater" in which they "voted to substitute their judgment
for that of our military commanders on the ground in Iraq." Tim
Grieve of Salon.com noted, "It was a nice line and all, but perhaps
it wouldn't be a bad idea if the reporters who go about quoting it
tonight mention that the president had to oust his own "military
commanders on the ground in Iraq" in order to find some who agreed
with his plan to send more troops there. Bush in January replaced
Gen. John Abizaid at Central Command and Gen. George Casey as
commander of the Iraq force after they balked at his "surge"
plan.

UNSECURED MUNITIONS KILL GI'S: Half of US casualties in
Iraq have been caused by munitions in ammo dumps that US forces
failed to secure even after they were found because it was not a Bush
administration priority, the Government Accountability Office
reported (3/22), as noted by ProctoringCongress.blogspot.com (3/23).
The GAO concluded that "a fundamental gap existed between the
[Operation Iraqi Freedom] war plan assumptions and the
experiences of US and coalition forces in Iraq, contributing to
insufficient troops being on the ground to prevent widespread looting
of conventional munitions storage sites and resulting in looted
munitions being a continuing asymmetric threat to US and coalition
forces. The human, strategic, and financial costs of this failure to
provide sufficient troops have been high, with [improved
explosive devices] made with looted munitions causing about half
of all US combat fatalities and casualties in Iraq and killing
hundreds of Iraqis and contributing to increasing instability,
challenging US strategic goals in Iraq. Further, DoD does not appear
to have conducted a theaterwide survey and assessed the risk
associated with unsecured conventional munitions storage sites to
US." Those munitions subsequently killed 1,600 Americans and severely
injured 10,000-15,000 more.

OBEY: NO APOLOGIES TO WAR CHEERLEADERS: Rep. David Obey,
D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was in no
mood to take criticism from the neocon Washington Post editorial page
when it criticized his supplemental funding bill as "Retreat and
Butter" because it added $21 bln in domestic spending items,
including agriculture disaster payments, conservation subsidies,
wildfire suppression projects and New Orleans levee construction to
the administration's request for $100 bln. In remarks on the House
floor, Obey said, "Let me submit to you the problem we have today is
not that we didn't listen enough to people like the Washington Post.
It's that we listened too much. They endorsed going to war in the
first place. They helped drive the drumbeat that drove almost
two-thirds of the people in this chamber to vote for that
misbegotten, stupid, ill-advised war that has destroyed our influence
over a third of the world. So I make no apology if the moral
sensibilities of some people on this floor, or the editorial writers
of the Washington Post, are offended because they don't like the
specific language contained in our benchmarks or in our timelines.
What matters in the end is not what the specific language is. What
matters is whether or not we produce a product today that puts
pressure on this administration and sends a message to Iraq, to the
Iraqi politicians that we're going to end the permanent long-term
dead end babysitting service. That's what we're trying to do. And if
the Washington Post is offended about the way we do it, that's just
too bad."

SEE YOUR TAX CUTS: Responsible Wealth, a project of United
for a Fair Economy, announced MyTaxCut, an online calculator that
lets taxpayers calculate their share of the federal tax cuts for the
2006 tax year. See the form at www.responsiblewealth.org/mytaxcut. It
uses the 1997 capital-gains tax cut and the 2001 and 2003 income,
dividend, and capital gains tax cuts. It is part of the Tax Fairness
Pledge that asks wealthy recipients of federal tax cuts to donate
their windfall savings to fight for fairer tax policies. "We're
hoping that wealthy people will be dismayed to realize just how much
they receive every year from the tax cuts enacted in 1997, 2001 and
2003, especially in a time of huge deficits and harmful budget cuts,"
said Mike Lapham, director of the Responsible Wealth project at UFE.
"Last year the total in federal tax cuts for those with incomes above
$200,000 per year was more than $81 billion! That's more than twice
what the 90 million taxpayers who made less than $50,000
received."

The three federal tax cuts used in the calculations for the pledge
are the 1997 capital-gains tax cut and the 2001 and 2003 income,
dividend, and capital gains tax cuts. The 1997 change is permanent,
but the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are due to expire in 2010.
Nevertheless, the president's current budget proposal assumes that
his cuts will be made permanent at a 10-year cost of $2.3 tln.

NO PEACE FOR FAIRMONT: When a women's Peace Club in
Fairmont, Minn., proposed that the City Council endorse a federal
bill that would create a US Department of Peace to promote creative
ways to avoid conflicts, the idea seemed so noncontroversial that the
council last November unanimously passed the resolution without any
debate. But when the local newspaper reported the action the next
morning, Daniel Zwerdling reported 3/24 on NPR, Jerome Kortuem, a
Vietnam veteran, was dumbfounded. "I just couldn't believe it,"
Kortuem said. "These communists are trying to do it again." Council
members in the predominantly Republican town of 10,000 were barraged
with phone calls and called another hearing two weeks later to
reconsider the resolution. At the hearing, Zwerdling said, there was
little connection between what critics claimed the Peace Department
would do and what the congressional bill actually says, as one of the
biggest fears was that the Peace Department would give the United
Nations power over the United States. When the hearing was over, the
council voted 3-2 to rescind its earlier resolution supporting the
Department of Peace.

Zwerdling noted that the bill is in no danger of passing. While
several dozen Democrats support it, probably its highest-profile
supporter is sponsor Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, presidential candidate
whose popularity generally ranks in the low single figures, and party
leaders have ignored it. But the idea dates back to the birth of the
nation, when Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, proposed creation of a Peace Office to balance what was
then known as the War Office. Kucinich's bill (HR 808) would set up
the department as part of the president's Cabinet, funded at 2% of
the Defense Department's budget, to research and develop approaches
to "conflict resolution," and recommend ways to use these strategies
to try to reduce violence, both in the US and around the world.
Nearly 20 communities -- including Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago and
Newark, N.J. -- have passed resolutions supporting the Department of
Peace.

DEMOCRACY WEEKENDS: Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County,
Calif., is hosting two weekend-long intensive workshops entitled
"Community Organizing for Deep Democracy." They will take place May
11-13 in Occidental, Calif., and Aug. 10-12 in Humboldt County,
Calif. For more information see duhc.org, email info@DUHC.org or
phone 707-269-0984. Retreats are limited to twenty participants.
Democracy Unlimited is the Northern California group, which recently
passed a revolutionary and strategic ballot initiative challenging
corporate personhood and asserting community rights. For more
information on Measure T, visit: votelocalcontrol.org.

INTERIOR OFFICIAL GUILTY OF LYING: Steven Griles, President
Bush's former No. 2 man at the Interior Department, pled guilty to a
felony obstruction of justice charge for lying to the Senate Indian
Affairs Committee and its investigators about his relationship with
Jack Abramoff. Griles, a former mining lobbyist, was part of the
president's transition team; he was effectively the Interior
Department's chief operating officer; he was the department's top
representative on Dick Cheney's energy task force; and he lives with
Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who was, until recently, an assistant attorney
general in charge of the Justice Department's environmental division.
As the Associated Press reported previously, Wooldridge bought a
vacation home last year with Griles and the top Washington lobbyist
for ConocoPhillips -- then signed an agreement giving the oil company
more time to deal with pollution at some of its facilities.

RUN, ELIZABETH, RUN: Several commentators have noted the
badgering tone of Katie Couric when she interviewed John and
Elizabeth Edwards on 60 Minutes (3/25). Walter Shapiro of Salon.com
noted (3/27), "Again and again, without getting the response she
wanted, Couric asked them why they hadn't yielded to the return of
Elizabeth's illness and broadly hinted that they should have called
off John's campaign for the presidency. Finally, almost in
exasperation, Couric turned to Elizabeth and said bluntly, 'Here
you're staring at possible death ...' Elizabeth interrupted Couric
with this cut-to-the-chase response: 'Aren't we all, though?'

"Left unsaid was that Couric's husband had died from colon cancer
in 1998 -- and the perky anchor kept appearing on the Today show till
the last week of his life. Left unsaid was that legendary newsman Ed
Bradley, who died of leukemia last year, was contributing to 60
Minutes until the very end.

"Embedded in Couric's smarmy comment was the implication that any
public figure afflicted with an incurable disease has an obligation
to climb on an ice floe and sail off to oblivion so that TV viewers
in the prized 18-to-35-year-old demographic do not have to
acknowledge their own mortality. Or that, at least, Elizabeth
Edwards, whose breast cancer has recurred, owes it to the world to
spend her remaining years offstage with their two small children,
Emma Claire, 8, and 6-year-old Jack. ..."

Shapiro concludes, "Presidential races are often about more than
control of the levers of power and the policy direction of the
nation. Prior campaigns forced the nation to confront questions about
religion, divorce and career-minded first ladies. This time around,
especially for the Democrats, everything is on the table: race
(Barack Obama), gender (Hillary Clinton), Hispanic heritage (Bill
Richardson) and now cancer (the Edwardses). In an election cycle in
which the Democrats are poised to surmount age-old political
prejudices, outmoded views about the proper conduct of people with
cancer deserve to be jettisoned, whether or not John Edwards ever
makes it to the White House."

PS: White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who went through
chemotherapy for colon cancer two years ago, at the close of his 3/23
press briefing praised the dignity and optimism Mrs. Edwards showed.
"As somebody who has been through this, Elizabeth Edwards is setting
a powerful example for a lot of people, and a good and positive one,"
Snow said. "She's being aggressive. She's living an active life. And
a positive attitude, prayers, and people you love are always a very
good addition to any kind of medicine you have. So for Elizabeth
Edwards, good going. Our prayers are with you." Snow went in for what
was expected to be routine surgery on 3/26 to remove a small growth
from his lower abdomen, but the White House announced 3/27 that
doctors found cancer in his liver.

SENATE VOTES DOWN TAX BREAKS: Eleven Dems joined Senate
Republicans to vote down $21.5 bln in property tax relief to states.
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed an amendment to the Senate
budget resolution to restore the income tax rate on income above $1
mln a year to pre-Bush-tax-cut levels, and put the $21.5 billion
savings into grants to states for special education -- a program that
is directly connected to high property tax rates. Because the federal
government mandates that states provide the special education funding
that the federal government refuses to provide, David Sirota noted at
workingforchange.com (3/22), states are forced to pay for this gap
primarily through higher property taxes. In addition to 47
Republicans, Dems voting against Sanders' amendment included Max
Baucus (Mont.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Tom Carper (Del.), Mary
Landrieu (La.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Ben
Nelson (Neb), Ken Salazar (Colo.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Jim Webb
(Va.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), as the amendment was defeated 58-38.
"I am optimistic about the new Congress's willingness to better
represent middle-class interests," wrote Sirota, co-chair of the
Progressive States Network. "But I must admit, when one-fifth of the
Senate Democratic Caucus goes on record protecting tax cuts for the
1/3rd of 1% of Americans making over a million dollars a year and
voting against property tax cuts for tens of millions of ordinary
Americans, my optimism is, ahem, shaken."